shivers

As a craggy asteroid rockets through space two bored police officers sit in their cruiser. One takes a nap. The other clocks the airspeed of a whippoorwill. Suddenly the asteroid is shown on a collision course with Earth. Our cops? Still bored, though one more annoyed with the other. The asteroid screams through the atmosphere, erupting in flame and splitting before impacting in the dirt a mile or two behind them. The smoking asteroid cracks open as we hear a squirmy chattering. Sound familiar? Of course.

The typical reaction when I mention parasites is for a small shudder to course though the listener's body and some kind of verbal reaction such as, "Oh man, gross!" But really, are they so bad? They just want to be inside you. Uh...wait, they just want to live off of you. Er...